Japan Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant blog
Tracking Fukushima news from day 1 : | Now one of the world's largest Public Available Repositories of the Chronology of the Daiichi Nuclear ongoing Disaster.
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Wednesday, 31 August 2011

Fukushima is now far and away the worst nuclear disaster in all of human history. Chernobyl was a Sunday picnic compared to Fukushima and the amount of cesium-137 released at Fukushima this year so far is equivalent to 168 Hiroshima bombs.

The crisis at Fukushima is far, far worse than you have been told. We are talking about multiple self-sustaining nuclear meltdowns that will not be fully contained for years.

In an attempt to keep people calm, authorities in Japan (and around the rest of the world as well) have lied and lied and lied. Over the months that have passed since the disaster began, small bits of the truth have slowly started to come out.

Authorities are finally admitting that the area immediately surrounding Fukushima will be uninhabitable indefinitely, and they are finally admitting that the amount of radioactive material that has been released is far higher than initially reported. It is going to take the Japanese years to fully contain this problem. Meanwhile, Fukushima will continue to blast all of us with high levels of cesium, strontium and plutonium and will slowly kill millions of people around the globe for years to come.

These days, the mainstream media does not talk about Fukushima much. The reality is that there have been a whole lot of other disasters for them to talk about.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

(UPDATE on 8/30/2011: NISA still hasn't said a word about conversion, but someone in Japan did the calculation based on the NISA's numbers released on June 6. You can view it at this link or in the image below. In plain language, neptunium-239 will decay into plutonium-239, adding 2×10^7 becquerels (20,000,000 becquerels) to the existing plutonium-239. The calculation was done by Tomohiro Endo, a researcher (nuclear physics) at Nagoya University.)

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(UPDATE on 8/29/2011: NISA backtracked in the joint conference (TEPCO/government) in the afternoon, and now says it's not sure about the conversion rate of neptunium-239 into plutonium-239.)

Tokyo Electric Power Company says 2 male workers at its troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were showered with highly radioactive water by mistake.

The accident occurred on Wednesday morning.
The two subcontracting workers were suddenly splashed with water leaking from a container whose valve was not shut. The container was part of the contaminated water processing system.
....

Tuesday, 30 August 2011

Alarmist predictions that the long-term health effects of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan will be worse than those following Chernobyl in 1986 are likely to aggravate harmful psychological effects of the incident. That was the warning heard at an international conference on radiation research in Warsaw, Poland, this week.
One report, in UK newspaper The Independent, quoted a scientist who predicted more than a million would die, and that the prolonged release of radioactivity from Fukushima would make health effects worse than those from the sudden release experienced at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine.
“We’ve got to stop these sorts of reports coming out, because they are really upsetting the Japanese population,” says Gerry Thomas at Imperial College London, who is attending the meeting. “The media has a hell of a lot of responsibility here, because the worst post-Chernobyl effects were the psychological consequences and this shouldn’t happen again.” [...]

In this Monday, Aug. 1, 2011 photo released by Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Tuesday, Aug. 2, a worker in protective gear measures radiation levels near a duct connected to a ventilation stack between the Unit 1 and Unit 2 reactors at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan. (AP Photo/Tokyo Electric Power Co.)

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A worker in his 40s who had been engaged in recovery work at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has died of acute leukemia, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Tuesday.
Tokyo Electric said the worker's death is not linked with his work at the plant, citing results of medical examination by doctors.
The man had been exposed to 0.5 millisievert of radiation at the plant and showed no internal exposure to radiation, said the power company, known as TEPCO.
The dosage is much smaller than 5 millisieverts or higher per year -- the benchmark for recognizing a death as work-related -- TEPCO said, citing the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare's criteria on work-related deaths. The ministry's criteria also put the incubation period to develop symptoms of acute leukemia at one year.
TEPCO said the man had been involved with duties on radiation control at the plant for a week starting in early August. He later complained of poor health and underwent medical checkups before his death.

TEPCO said it received the report on the worker's death on Aug. 16 from one of its contractors whose subcontractor hired the worker.
The utility said it had no information on the man's work career before being engaged in the recovery work at the nuclear power plant which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake-tsunami disaster.

Monday, 29 August 2011

A worker of an office cleaning company monitors the level of radiation at a playground of an elementary school in Fukushima, northern Japan August 6, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Yuriko Nakao

By Natalia Konstantinovskaya

Greenpeace said on Monday that schools and surrounding areas located 60 km (38 miles) from Japan's tsunami-hit nuclear power plant were unsafe for children, showing radiation readings as much as 70 times internationally accepted levels.The environmental group took samples at and near three schools in Fukushima city, well outside the 20 km exclusion zone from Tokyo Electric Power's stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Japan's northeast."No parent should have to choose between radiation exposure and education for their child," said Kazue Suzuki, Greenpeace Japan's anti-nuclear project head.The government had already taken steps to decontaminate schools in Fukushima prefecture, where the crippled plant has been leaking radiation since it was hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.Calling the measures "deplorably late and inadequate," Greenpeace said it had found average dose rates above the maximum allowed under international standards, of 1 millisievert per year, or 0.11 microsievert per hour.Japan's education ministry on Friday set a looser standard, allowing up to 1 microsievert per hour of radiation in schools.Greenpeace said that inside a high school it tested, the reading was 0.5 microsievert per hour, breaching international standards even after the government's clean-up.At a staircase connecting a school playground to the street, it found radiation amounting to 7.9 microsieverts per hour, or about 70 times the maximum allowed, exceeding even Japan's own standard.Greenpeace urged the government to delay reopening the schools as planned on September 1 after the summer break and relocate children in the most affected cities until decontamination was complete.Fukushima city dismissed Greenpeace's calls, saying the schools were safe under the government's norms."We're finished decontaminating the schools, and they no longer have high radiation levels," city official Yoshimasa Kanno said. He added that postponing the opening of more than 100 schools in the city based on Greenpeace's findings of "only three" would be unreasonable.RADIATION TO PERSIST FOR YEARSDespite the government's reassurances, parents have removed thousands of children from schools in Fukushima since the disasters, fearing damage to their health.Underscoring such concerns, the government said this month that 45 percent of children living outside the evacuation zone in Fukushima were exposed to low levels of radiation though it was within safety levels.Greenpeace, which took its samples August 17-19, did not say how long it might take to rid the areas of harmful levels of radiation.But Jan van de Putte, its radiation expert, noted that cleaning up in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, about 100 km from Chernobyl, required hundreds of thousands of workers toiling over several months.A vast area is still uninhabitable around the Chernobyl plant 25 years after the world's worst nuclear disaster, and experts have estimated Japan's decontamination efforts could cost as much as 10 trillion yen ($130 billion)."We expect that the radiation levels would persist for a long period of time," van de Putte said. ($1 = 76.855 Japanese Yen)(Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Chris Gallagher)

Sunday, 28 August 2011

Save us.

Posted by Mochizuki on August 28th, 2011

[Contaminated food is distributed to all around in Japan.Japanese students are forced to take the risk of internal exposure.]
The situation is worse than you think.Please do know that and tell it to everyone.
If you ever think of visiting Japan,or already staying in Japan,you must be aware of the food risk.
Since 311,under the slogan “Let’s support north Japan by consuming their agricultural products”,
lots of the food have been distributed to all over Japan,with NO radiation check.http://www.maff.go.jp/j/soushoku/eat/gallery/movie.html
7/4/2011,on the TV show of NHK,minister of health,Ohtsuka admitted that highly contaminated food is already distributed in Japan,because of the lack of the checking facility.http://hibaku.blogspot.com/2011/07/blog-post_8522.html
Contaminated food has already reached Okinawa,where is 1500km far from Fukushima.
100 of 600 local governments around in Tokyo and north Japan do not conduct any radiation check for their local products.http://www.47news.jp/CN/201108/CN2011082301001059.html
Even food produced in Okinawa may be contaminated.
They found a lot of the polluted mold leaf were sold in Okinawa.(Max ; 17,500Bq/kg)
From what the gov have been doing,this must be only a part of their entire concealment.http://mainichi.jp/area/okinawa/news/20110824rky00m040008000c.html
Moreover,JP gov allowed them to move Fukushima cows to all around in Japan,such as beef,pork,chicken,etc..
When they are sold at supermarket,they are labelled as being originated from the “moved area” out of Fukushima.
In the second biggest city of Japan,Yokohama,Fukushima beef was served for school lunch until very recent.
However,some school ban students bringing their home-made lunch box and water bottle only “to keep it normal”.Students were forced to eat contaminated food knowing the risk.
Recently Yokohama local government finally admitted that cesium beef was served for 8,000 students.(Max ; 719Bq/kg)http://www.city.yokohama.lg.jp/kenko/syoku-anzen/1-2/gyu2-01.pdf
Suspected food has already been served for 84,000 students only in Yokohama.
Japanese children have NO right to reject consuming radioactive food.
It’s not only children.It’s also you who are not allowed to choose.
Labeling of the food origin is carefully manipulated.
In Hotel,in restaurant,in department store,in convenient store,they make it impossible for you to recognize the origin.
Dr.Takeda warns there is a possibility that they took Fukushima cow to Hokkaido and sell milk with the label of Hokkaido.http://takedanet.com/2011/07/post_5d33.html
Fukushima yogurt is sold in Kobe to “cheer them up”.http://ameblo.jp/touhokutokusan/entry-10944014066.html
Food with “harmful rumor” are positively sold at convenient stores.(Family mart)http://ameblo.jp/touhokutokusan/entry-10951153560.html
Restaurant chains are even proud of selling polluted food.(Skylark)https://sites.google.com/site/oennetwork/ouen-kigyou-shoukai/mudai-1
They will re-start making beer in Sendai.(Kirin)http://ameblo.jp/touhokutokusan/entry-10958373966.html
It’s not only food.
JP gov allowed them to move the polluted rubble to all over Japan.http://www.asyura2.com/11/genpatu13/msg/132.html
They will be burnt,radioactive ash will fly around as plume again.http://togetter.com/li/178801
It’s getting more difficult and more to buy “clean” food in Japan.
You can even call it the state of “civil war”.
Please tell this truth to everyone around you and save us.
Label of the origin has been based on the prefectures but it’s becoming “made in Japan”,
when it comes to fish,it’s “from Pacific ocean” and “from Korea/Japan sea”.
i expect you foreign countries put pressure on JP gov,so they may prepare radiation checker for food at every school like Belarus.
If you are planning to Japan,please tell hotels to prepare the checker at hotels too.
by Mariko Toya
Translation Mochizuki Iori

What is actually going to take place at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, where word is that the four reactors that were crippled in the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami will eventually be decommissioned?
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) defines "decommissioning" as the process of removing spent fuel from reactors and dismantling all facilities. Ultimately, the site of a decommissioned reactor is meant to be reverted into a vacant lot.
In 1996, the then Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) -- now the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) -- finished decommissioning its Japan Power Demonstration Reactor. The decommissioning process of the Tokai Nuclear Power Plant in the Ibaraki Prefecture village of Tokai began in 1998 and is set to end in fiscal 2020, while the No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear reactors at the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant in the Shizuoka Prefecture city of Omaezaki are slated for decommissioning by fiscal 2036. Around the world, only around 15 nuclear reactors have thus far been dismantled.
The standard decommissioning process entails six major steps: 1. Remove spent fuel rods, 2. Remove radioactive materials that have become affixed to reactor pipes and containers, 3. Wait for radiation levels to go down with time, 4. Dismantle reactors and other internal vessels and pipes, 5. Dismantle the reactor buildings, and 6. Make the site into a vacant lot.

"Cleaning," "waiting," and "dismantling" are the three key actions in this process. Needless to say, this all needs to be done while simultaneously containing radioactive materials.

While the government defends its new monitoring program of online postings concerning the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to stem the spread of "inaccurate" information, critics say it harkens back to Big Brother.
The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy said tweets on Twitter and postings to blogs will be monitored for groundless and inaccurate information that could inflame and mislead the public.
The agency said it is trying to "track down inaccurate information and to provide correct ones instead."
But critics are skeptical about the agency's motive, especially because the government has been under fire for failing to provide an accurate picture of what has been occurring at the plant and the spread of radioactive contamination.
The cost for the project was earmarked in an extra government budget to finance the rebuilding of northeastern Japan ravaged by the March 11 disaster.

Thursday, 25 August 2011

TOKYO, August 25, 2011 (AFP) - Japan's government estimates the amount of radioactive caesium-137 released by the Fukushima nuclear disaster so far is equal to that of 168 Hiroshima bombs, a news report said Thursday.
Government nuclear experts, however, said the World War II bomb blast and the accidental reactor meltdowns at Fukushima, which has seen ongoing radiation leaks but no deaths so far, were beyond comparison.
The amount of caesium-137 released since the three reactors were crippled by the March 11 quake and tsunami has been estimated at 15,000 tera becquerels, the Tokyo Shimbun reported, quoting a government calculation.
That compares with the 89 tera becquerels released by "Little Boy", the uranium bomb the United States dropped on the western Japanese city in the final days of World War II, the report said.
The estimate was submitted by Prime Minister Naoto Kan's cabinet to a lower house committee on promotion of technology and innovation, the daily said.
The government, however, argued that the comparison was not valid.
While the Hiroshima bomb claimed most of its victims in the intense heatwave of a mid-air nuclear explosion and the highly radioactive fallout from its mushroom cloud, no such nuclear explosions hit Fukushima.
There, the radiation has seeped from molten fuel inside reactors damaged by hydrogen explosions.
"An atomic bomb is designed to enable mass-killing and mass-destruction by causing blast waves and heat rays and releasing neutron radiation," the Tokyo Shimbun daily quoted a government official as saying. "It is not rational to make a simple comparison only based on the amount of isotopes released."
Government officials were not immediately available to confirm the report.
The blinding blast of the Hiroshima bomb and its fallout killed some 140,000 people, either instantly or in the days and weeks that followed as high radiation or horrific burns took their toll.
At Fukushima, Japan declared a 20-kilometre (12 mile) evacuation and no-go zone around the plant after the March 11 quake and tsunami triggered the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl 25 years ago.
A recent government survey showed that some areas within the 20-kilometre zone are contaminated with radiation equivalent to more than 500 millisieverts per year -- 25 times more than the government's annual limit.

News

Aug 25, 2011

Radiation from the Fukushima nuclear accident, which took place in Japan earlier this year, spread to most parts of the northern hemisphere, a new study shows. Rainwater and milk samples in Romania, a distance of over 10,000 km from Japan, contained traces of radioactive iodine in the days following the accident.

Wednesday, 24 August 2011

Jim Stone, an investigative journalist, suggested that Fukushima's nuclear disaster was set-off by some sort of eco-terrorism. Is that even possible.

Then U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen, confirmed in 1997 that eco-terrorism, does in fact exist.

“Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves. So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It’s real, and that’s the reason why we have to intensify our efforts, and that’s why this is so important.”
— Secretary of Defense William Cohen, 1997

Tuesday, 23 August 2011

My real name is Nelson. I am in Tokyo at the moment for those that already know of me .

I have made this video and created a petition to Save the Children of Fukushima. I will be know marching down to all embassies in Tokyo and take the fight to them. I plan to associate with Greenpeace, Criirad and many parent associations as well as public figures. This is for real … the fight is on!

Please watch the video but what is important is to spread it around like wild fire ! I have posted it on various sites … Vimeo is the best one for the US, in Youtube it had to be split in two and Daily motion (not recommended for US cause of adds !

It has been 10 hours and between all the sites (and counting) over 2000 people have already seen it ! Many have expressed to me via our FB group that they had no idea what was going on in Japan.

http://vimeo.com/27982280

If you wish to join our FB group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/149626738449542/

Please sign and spread the petition

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/evacuate_fukushima/

I have sent the video directly to Prime Minister Naoto KAN on his blog and is now probably watching as we speak !!! Hope it ruined his lunch.

Anyway, please help us !! THis is urgent.

For those that “prayed for Japan”, now it is time to “FIGHT FOR JAPAN”. No more Mr. nice guy!

Monday, 22 August 2011

Newly released neutron data from three University of California San Diego scientists confirms Fairewinds' April analysis that the nuclear core at Fukushima Daiichi turned on and off after TEPCO claimed its reactors had been shutdown. This periodic nuclear chain reaction (inadvertent criticality) continued to contaminate the surrounding environment and upper atmosphere with large doses of radioactivity.

Sunday, 21 August 2011

Published: August 21, 2011

TOKYO — Broad areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels, several major media outlets said Monday.

Saturday, 20 August 2011

August 18, 2011 — Tokyo, Japan (Reuters) Japanese scientists say the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake created fissures on the ocean floor across the region, destroying the deep sea eco-system.

Scientists inspect the deep sea eco-system

Japanese scientists recently found that the March 11 magitude-9 earthquake created fissures on the ocean floor across the region and destroyed the deep sea eco-system.

Researchers at Japan's Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology said they found a number of fissures, some of them as wide as one metre (3.3 feet) during their surveys at the 5,000-metre (3.1-mile) deep-sea banks near the quake-hit Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture, earlier this month

A link to a friends Blog from GLP

The purpose of this essay is to provide some easy, common sense things you can do to increase your survival chances in the event of radiation entering your neighborhood. I also plan to create threads to discuss food, water, PPE and other issues that must be solved in order to SIP for an extended period.

Little attention has been paid to prepping your house or shelter to ensure as much of the radiation stays outside as possible. The object of this essay is to provide some information on this subject.

The information contained herein is based on my professional knowledge as a manufacturer, importer and retailer of PPE as well as on my own prepping plans - it is in fact part of my personal family crisis management plan. I have a wife and 3 young children that are my priority to protect.

Published: August 20, 2011

Scientists have long sought easier ways to make the costly material known as enriched uranium — the fuel of nuclear reactors and bombs, now produced only in giant industrial plants.

Centrifuges for purifying uranium at a plant owned by the energy company USEC in Piketon, Ohio. A breakthrough with lasers promises to make the enrichment process easier and cheaper, allowing for much smaller plants.

“The issue is too big” to leave to the federal status quo, said Francis Slakey, a physicist at Georgetown University and American Physical Society official.

One idea, a half-century old, has been to do it with nothing more substantial than lasers and their rays of concentrated light. This futuristic approach has always proved too expensive and difficult for anything but laboratory experimentation.

Until now.

In a little-known effort, General Electric has successfully tested laser enrichment for two years and is seeking federal permission to build a $1 billion plant that would make reactor fuel by the ton.

The scale is based on Chernobyl relocation criteria. You can see that there are many affected wards in Greater Tokyo, including those requiring at least temporary relocation by best practice standards.

Many areas remain unsampled anyhow and beware because radiation can be low here and high just a few meters away.

Update: the list of locations where measures were performed and the exact measure has been made available by a Facebook user at Scribd (found via Fukushima Diary).

The measures can only for minimal reference, as radiation, as I said above can change in a matter of meters, somewhat randomly. Anyhow there was a storm from the North falling into the Kanto region on the 19th. It is unavoidable that each storm or wind from the affected area will bring some more radiation, specially until some sort of containment is built around the reactors, so the situation can only worsen.

I went out for groceries and missed the entire scene. I'm leaving this up as I like to keep to the train track.

The continuation of the time laps shows that they are putting beams together to cover or seal the reactor. Later time shows workers entering and leaving (pretty quickly too) to work on some sort of frame.

Are you at risk? An important message about radiation health effects for people who were children in the 1950s

Nuclear weapons testing sill affects human health

Thousands of citizens affected by the U.S. Departmane of Energy (DOE) nuclear weapons complex are asking people around the nation to become more aware of the health effects of nuclear weapons testing, as part of Radiation Health Effects Awareness Month. Unfortunately, people in many parts of the country, not just those living in the shadows of DOE sites, are at increased risk of cancer from fallout from those bomb tests.
This educational program, consisting of fact sheets, background information, and action opportunities, is sponsored by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), a national network of grassroots and national organizations working on issues of nuclear weapons production and nuclear waste. Public education, awareness, and involvement are necessary because the health effects of above-ground nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s have still not been fully disclosed by the U.S. government even though tens of thousands of people are affected. In 1982, Congress directed the Department of Health and Human Services to assess the effects of Iodine-133 exposures from above-ground nuclear weapons tests conducted between 1945 and 1962. Results of that study were released in 1997, only after pressure was brought by ANA and other organizations.

Fukushima nuclear power plant radiation recordings of external gamma radiation have been so high this week, they went off scale said veteran nuclear expert Arnie Gunderson on Thursday after the famous physicist, Dr. Chris Busby told the Japanese people this week that radioactive air contamination there is now 300 times that of Chernobyl and 1000 times the atomic bomb peak in 1963, inferring that hundreds of millions of people are now dying from Fukushima radiation, including people in the United States.
If noticing unusual amounts of hair falling out, confusion, nose bleeds or other odd symptoms typical of radiation sickness, it might be due to the United States' record high levels of radiation, now multiple times acceptable safety limits not only on the west coast, but also in other locations around the nation.

Australia's CBS exposed the "unspeakable" realities of the Japanese catastrophe in its60 Minutes program Sunday night during which leading nuclear scientist Dr. Michio Kaku said radiation from Fukushima will impact of all of humanity. The nuclear energy power industry violation of the right to health is apparent throughout the new Australian report.

Since Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy plant has reportedly released 20 times the radiation contamination amount of the Hiroshima bomb, and its molten core is sinking through the Earth's crust, it appears to be in early stages of a "total China Syndrome meltdown" according to a Russia Today report Thursday during which Beyond Nuclear's Paul Gunter answered why media is blacking out the catastrophe, as noted by numerous scientists, and he revealed the increasing threat of a nuclear explosion.

"The total amount of leakage [is] about 29.6 times the amount of contamination caused by the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Assuming the source material to be uranium, we think the total amount of leakage to be about 20 times what was caused by the Hiroshima bomb."

Those were among alarming words stated by Dr. Tatsuhiko Kodama, 58, head of the University of Tokyo Radioisotope Center Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology in Meguro-ku in an interview with The Mainichi Daily News on August 20.

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The Canadian Food Inspection Agency plans to start testing fish off the coast of British Columbia for the presence of radiation stemming from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan earlier this year.
The agency has not yet released any specific details on the testing program, but did say it expects the test results to be well below Health Canada's actionable levels for radiation.
Fisheries activist Alexandra Morton with the Raincoast Research Society says she supports the testing, but calls the announcement a political move. Morton says millions of sockeye have started returning to the Fraser River and the fishing season is already well underway.
Salmon are a particular concern to Morton and others because their wide-ranging migration patterns can take them right across the Pacific Ocean to the coast of Japan.
"If they were actually concerned about the health of people and the fish, they would have started this actually at the beginning of the commercial openings. But to release this two days before the disease hearings at the Cohen inquiry, to me it's a political statement, it's a political effort to appear responsible," she said.
The Cohen Commission hearings into the collapse of the 2009 Fraser River sockeye salmon run resumed in Vancouver earlier this week.
Morton also wants the CFIA to test farmed salmon, because she says trace amounts of radiation were detected in seaweed on the B.C. coast.

Japanese scientist Shunichi Yamashita is a leading expert on the effects of nuclear radiation. In a SPIEGEL interview, he discusses his work in communicating the potential dangers of exposure to residents living near the Fukushima nuclear plant. The professor says many suffer from severe radiation anxiety.

How dangerous are low doses of exposure to radioactivity to humans? This question is heatedly debated within the scientific community. But it is not an easy time to convey details of that debate to the people in Japan living near the Fukushima nuclear plant who have now been exposed to the dangers of radiation.
Radiation-protection specialist Shunichi Yamashita, 59, has made significant contributions to what is known about the effects of radioactive radiation. He has studied the survivors of the World War II atomic bombing of Nagasaki as well as the consequences of the 1986 reactor accident at Chernobyl, which he has visited nearly 100 times as part of a Japanese scientific envoy. He is currently researching the effects of the Fukushima catastrophe — though his efforts are meeting with much resistance from local residents.
SPIEGEL interviewed Yamashita about the expected effects of exposure in Fukushima and his plans to conduct one of the largest scientific studies even undertaken in the region. As part of the study, he hopes to examine the health effects of the nuclear disaster on some 2 million people.

SPIEGEL: The government of the Fukushima prefecture has invited you to inform people in the affected region about radiation risks. Right at the beginning, you said: “The effects of radiation do not come to people who are happy and laughing, they come to people who are weak-spirited.” What did you mean by that?

Radiating Americans with Fukushima rain, food: Clinton’s secret pact, The National, Deborah Dupre , Human Rights ExaminerAugust 14, 2011 -Government agreed to downplay Fukushima radiation Fukushima is far from stabilized according to energy advisor veteran with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, Arnie Gundersen who told Solar IMG Saturday that Americans, not just in the northwest, are unaware of being rained on with Fukushima nuclear hot particles and eating Fukushima contaminated food because the US government has deliberately minimized the catastrophe, partially due to a pact Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed with Japan. Gundersen, with a team of other scientists, intends to prove government statements about Fukushima are false.

China has reported that the radioactive contamination in the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima nuclear power plant is far wider than the areas released by the Japanese government.China has discovered 100,000 square miles of Pacific Ocean waters, at distances up to 800 kilometers from Fukushima, with Cesium radiation levels up to 300 times normal and Strontium radiation levels up to 100 times normal.
China says a study conducted by its State Oceanic Administration has found widespread levels of highly radioactive contamination throughout Pacific Ocean.
China’s State Oceanic Administration said the tests show that the polluted area is far wider than the areas released by the Japanese government.

by SterneckQuestion by …: Radioactivity in water at Fukushima nuclear plant has reached 10 million times! Are you kidding me?
10 million time more than the normal level and they’re doing nothing about it! I just can’t believe it!
BQ: And why they keep saying, “The radiation found in the sea will no longer be a risk after eight days because of iodine’s half-life.” Are they saying that so the people won’t panic? But come on, 10 million times! That’s unbelievable! Of course, I’ll panic! Paaaaannnnniiiiiiiiiiiiccccccccccc!!!!!!!!!!!
@ Galt – they have to kill all 6 plants?

Host: Doctor running clinic where plant workers can get medical care says many employees hide amount of radiation they’ve been exposed to by ditching personal monitors… the reason? If they exceed the limit there is no more work.

Doctor: … When they go into dangerous areas they leave radiation meters behind, the real radiation count is much higher, that’s a fact.

I would not have exposed myself or my family to anyone from that zone. This is a question (and the answer)that was asked by some people about radiation contamination in Japan and if it can be transferred to other people from people from Japan:

Q: How is radioactive contamination spread? A: People who are externally contaminated with radioactive material can contaminate other people or surfaces that they touch. For example, people who have radioactive dust on their clothing may spread the radioactive dust when they sit in chairs or hug other people.

People who are internally contaminated can expose people near them to radiation from the radioactive material inside their bodies. The body fluids (blood, sweat, urine) of an internally contaminated person can contain radioactive materials. Coming in contact with these body fluids can result in contamination and/or exposure.

Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.

"How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?" asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives.

"The government and TEPCO have not reported the total amount of the released radioactivity yet," said Kodama, who believes things are far worse than even the recent detection of extremely high radiation levels at the plant.
There is widespread concern in Japan about a general lack of government monitoring for radiation, which has caused people to begin their own independent monitoring, which are also finding disturbingly high levels of radiation.
Kodama's centre, using 27 facilities to measure radiation across the country, has been closely monitoring the situation at Fukushima - and their findings are alarming.

According to Dr Kodama, the total amount of radiation released over a period of more than five months from the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster is the equivalent to more than 29 "Hiroshima-type atomic bombs" and the amount of uranium released "is equivalent to 20" Hiroshima bombs.
Kodama, along with other scientists, is concerned about the ongoing crisis resulting from the Fukushima situation, as well as what he believes to be inadequate government reaction, and believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas.

Distrust of the Japanese government's response to the nuclear disaster is now common among people living in the effected prefectures, and people are concerned about their health.

Recent readings taken at the plant are alarming.

When on August 2nd readings of 10,000 millisieverts (10 sieverts) of radioactivity per hour were detected at the plant, Japan's science ministry said that level of dose is fatal to humans, and is enough radiation to kill a person within one to two weeks after the exposure.

10,000 millisieverts (mSv) is the equivalent of approximately 100,000 chest x-rays.

It is an amount 250 per cent higher than levels recorded at the plant in March after it was heavily damaged by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), that took the reading, used equipment to measure radiation from a distance, and was unable to ascertain the exact level because the device's maximum reading is only 10,000 mSv.

TEPCO also detected 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) per hour in debris outside the plant, as well as finding 4,000 mSv per hour inside one of the reactor buildings.

The Fukushima disaster has been rated as a "level seven" on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). This level, the highest, is the same as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, and is defined by the scale as: "[A] major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures."

The Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters are the only nuclear accidents to have been rated level seven on the scale, which is intended to be logarithmic, similar to the scale used to describe the comparative magnitude of earthquakes. Each increasing level represents an accident approximately ten times more severe than the previous level.

Doctors in Japan are already treating patients suffering health effects they attribute to radiation from the ongoing nuclear disaster.

She attributes the symptoms to radiation exposure, and added: "We are encountering new situations we cannot explain with the body of knowledge we have relied upon up until now."

"The situation at the Daiichi Nuclear facility in Fukushima has not yet been fully stabilised, and we can't yet see an end in sight," Yanagisawa said. "Because the nuclear material has not yet been encapsulated, radiation continues to stream into the environment."

Health concerns

Al Jazeera's Aela Callan, reporting from Japan's Ibaraki prefecture, said of the recently detected high radiation readings: "It is now looking more likely that this area has been this radioactive since the earthquake and tsunami, but no one realised until now."

Workers at Fukushima are only allowed to be exposed to 250 mSv of ionising radiation per year.

Junichi Matsumoto, a TEPCO spokesman, said the high dose was discovered in an area that does not hamper recovery efforts at the stricken plant.
Yet radioactive cesium exceeding the government limit was detected in processed tea made in Tochigi City, about 160km from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to the Tochigi Prefectural Government, who said radioactive cesium was detected in tea processed from leaves harvested in the city in early July.
The level is more than 3 times the provisional government limit.
Yanagisawa's hospital is located approximately 200km from Fukushima, so the health problems she is seeing that she attributes to radiation exposure causes her to be concerned by what she believes to be a grossly inadequate response from the government.

From her perspective, the only thing the government has done is to, on April 25, raise the acceptable radiation exposure limit for children from 1 mSv/year to 20 mSv/year.

"This has caused controversy, from the medical point of view," Yanagisawa told Al Jazeera. "This is certainly an issue that involves both personal internal exposures as well as low-dose exposures."

Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan Executive Director, said: "It is utterly outrageous to raise the exposure levels for children to twenty times the maximum limit for adults."
"The Japanese government cannot simply increase safety limits for the sake of political convenience or to give the impression of normality."

Authoritative current estimates of the health effects of low-dose ionizing radiation are published in the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation VII (BEIR VII) report from the US National Academy of Sciences.

The report reflects the substantial weight of scientific evidence proving there is no exposure to ionizing radiation that is risk-free.

The BEIR VII estimates that each 1 mSv of radiation is associated with an increased risk of all forms of cancer other than leukemia of about 1-in-10,000; an increased risk of leukemia of about 1-in-100,000; and a 1-in-17,500 increased risk of cancer death.

Dr Helen Caldicott, the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, is equally concerned about the health effects from Japan's nuclear disaster.

"Radioactive elements get into the testicles and ovaries, and these cause genetic disease like diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and mental retardation," she told Al Jazeera. "There are 2,600 of these diseases that get into our genes and are passed from generation to generation, forever."

So far, the only cases of acute radiation exposure have involved TEPCO workers at the stricken plant. Lower doses of radiation, particularly for children, are what many in the medical community are most concerned about, according to Dr Yanagisawa.

"Humans are not yet capable of accurately measuring the low dose exposure or internal exposure," she explained, "Arguing 'it is safe because it is not yet scientifically proven [to be unsafe]' would be wrong. That fact is that we are not yet collecting enough information to prove the situations scientifically. If that is the case, we can never say it is safe just by increasing the annual 1mSv level twenty fold."

Her concern is that the new exposure standards by the Japanese government do not take into account differences between adults and children, since children's sensitivity to radiation exposure is several times higher than that of adults.
Al Jazeera contacted Prime Minister Naoto Kan's office for comment on the situation.
Speaking on behalf of the Deputy Cabinet Secretary for Public Relations for the Prime Minister's office, Noriyuki Shikata said that the Japanese government "refers to the ICRP [International Commission on Radiological Protection] recommendation in 2007, which says the reference levels of radiological protection in emergency exposure situations is 20-100 mSv per year. The Government of Japan has set planned evacuation zones and specific spots recommended for evacuation where the radiation levels reach 20 mSv/year, in order to avoid excessive radiation exposure."
The prime minister's office explained that approximately 23bn yen ($300mn) is planned for decontamination efforts, and the government plans to have a decontamination policy "by around the end of August", with a secondary budget of about 97bn yen ($1.26bn) for health management and monitoring operations in the affected areas.
When questioned about the issue of "acute radiation exposure", Shikata pointed to the Japanese government having received a report from TEPCO about six of their workers having been exposed to more than 250 mSv, but did not mention any reports of civilian exposures.
Prime Minister Kan's office told Al Jazeera that, for their ongoing response to the Fukushima crisis, "the government of Japan has conducted all the possible countermeasures such as introduction of automatic dose management by ID codes for all workers and 24 hour allocation of doctors. The government of Japan will continue to tackle the issue of further improving the health management including medium and long term measures".
Shikata did not comment about Kodama's findings.
Kodama, who is also a doctor of internal medicine, has been working on decontamination of radioactive materials at radiation facilities in hospitals of the University of Tokyo for the past several decades.

"We had rain in Tokyo on March 21 and radiation increased to .2 micosieverts/hour and, since then, the level has been continuously high," said Kodama, who added that his reporting of radiation findings to the government has not been met an adequate reaction. "At that time, the chief cabinet secretary, Mr Edano, told the Japanese people that there would be no immediate harm to their health."

Kodama is an expert in internal exposure to radiation, and is concerned that the government has not implemented a strong response geared towards measuring radioactivity in food.

"Although three months have passed since the accident already, why have even such simple things have not been done yet?" he said. "I get very angry and fly into a rage."

According to Kodama, the major problem caused by internal radiation exposure is the generation of cancer cells as the radiation causes unnatural cellular mutation.

"Radiation has a high risk to embryos in pregnant women, juveniles, and highly proliferative cells of people of growing ages. Even for adults, highly proliferative cells, such as hairs, blood, and intestinal epithelium cells, are sensitive to radiation."

'Children are at greater risk'

Early on in the disaster, Dr Makoto Kondo of the department of radiology of Keio University's School of Medicine warned of "a large difference in radiation effects on adults compared to children".

Kondo explained the chances of children developing cancer from radiation exposure was many times higher than adults.

"Children's bodies are underdeveloped and easily affected by radiation, which could cause cancer or slow body development. It can also affect their brain development," he said.

Yanagisawa assumes that the Japanese government's evacuation standards, as well as their raising the permissible exposure limit to 20mSv "can cause hazards to children's health," and therefore "children are at a greater risk".

Nishio Masamichi, director of Japan's Hakkaido Cancer Centre and a radiation treatment specialist, published an article on July 27 titled: "The Problem of Radiation Exposure Countermeasures for the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Concerns for the Present Situation".

In the report, Masamichi said that such a dramatic increase in permitted radiation exposure was akin to "taking the lives of the people lightly". He believes that 20mSv is too high, especially for children who are far more susceptible to radiation.

"No level of radiation is acceptable, for children or anyone else," Caldicott told Al Jazeera. "Children are ten to 20 times more sensitive than adults. They must not be exposed to radiation of any level. At all."

In early July, officials with the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission announced that approximately 45 per cent of children in the Fukushima region had experienced thyroid exposure to radiation, according to a survey carried out in late March. The commission has not carried out any surveys since then.

"Now the Japanese government is underestimating the effects of low dosage and/or internal exposures and not raising the evacuation level even to the same level adopted in Chernobyl," Yanagisawa said. "People's lives are at stake, especially the lives of children, and it is obvious that the government is not placing top priority on the people's lives in their measures."

Caldicott feels the lack of a stronger response to safeguard the health of people in areas where radiation is found is "reprehensible".

"Millions of people need to be evacuated from those high radiation zones, especially the children."

Dr Yanagisawa is concerned about what she calls "late onset disorders" from radiation exposure resulting from the Fukushima disaster, as well as increasing cases of infertility and miscarriages.

"Incidence of cancer will undoubtedly increase," she said. "In the case of children, thyroid cancer and leukemia can start to appear after several years. In the case of adults, the incidence of various types of cancer will increase over the course of several decades."

Yanagisawa said it is "without doubt" that cancer rates among the Fukushima nuclear workers will increase, as will cases of lethargy, atherosclerosis, and other chronic diseases among the general population in the effected areas.

Yanagisawa believes it is time to listen to survivors of the atomic bombings. "To be exposed to radiation, to be told there is no immediate effect, and afterwards to be stricken with cancer - what it is like to suffer this way over a long period of time, only the survivors of the atomic bombings can truly understand," she told Al Jazeera.

Radioactive food and water

An August 1 press release from Japan's MHLW said no radioactive materials have been detected in the tap water of Fukushima prefecture, according to a survey conducted by the Japanese government's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters.

The government defines no detection as "no results exceeding the 'Index values for infants (radioactive iodine)'," and says "in case the level of radioactive iodine in tap water exceeds 100 Bq/kg, to refrain from giving infants formula milk dissolved by tap water, having them intake tap water … "

Yet, on June 27, results were published from a study that found 15 residents of Fukushima prefecture had tested positive for radiation in their urine.

Dr Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University, has been to Fukushima prefecture twice in order to take internal radiation exposure readings and facilitated the study.

According to the MHLW, distribution of several food products in Fukushima Prefecture remain restricted. This includes raw milk, vegetables including spinach, kakina, and all other leafy vegetables, including cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and beef.

The distribution of tealeaves remains restricted in several prefectures, including all of Ibaraki, and parts of Tochigi, Gunma, Chiba, Kanagawa Prefectures.

Iwate prefecture suspended all beef exports because of caesium contamination on August 1, making it the fourth prefecture to do so.

Due to caesium contaminated straw, beef exports have been banned in four Japanese prefectures [EPA]

Jyunichi Tokuyama, an expert with the Iwate Prefecture Agricultural and Fisheries Department, told Al Jazeera he did not know how to deal with the crisis. He was surprised because he did not expect radioactive hot spots in his prefecture, 300km from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

"The biggest cause of this contamination is the rice straw being fed to the cows, which was highly radioactive," Tokuyama told Al Jazeera.

Kamada feels the Japanese government is acting too slowly in response to the Fukushima disaster, and that the government needs to check radiation exposure levels "in each town and village" in Fukushima prefecture.

"They have to make a general map of radiation doses," he said. "Then they have to be concerned about human health levels, and radiation exposures to humans. They have to make the exposure dose map of Fukushima prefecture. Fukushima is not enough. Probably there are hot spots outside of Fukushima. So they also need to check ground exposure levels."

Caldicott said people around the world should be concerned about the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Radiation that continues to be released has global consequences.

More than 11,000 tonnes of radioactive water has been released into the ocean from the stricken plant.

Scientists warn that tuna caught off the Pacific coastal prefecture in northern Japan are now at risk of being radioactive [EPA]

"Those radioactive elements bio-concentrate in the algae, then the crustaceans eat that, which are eaten by small then big fish," Caldicott said. "That's why big fish have high concentrations of radioactivity and humans are at the top of the food chain, so we get the most radiation, ultimately."

On August 6, the 66th anniversary of the US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said: "Regarding nuclear energy, we will deeply reflect over the myth that nuclear energy is safe. We will thoroughly look into the cause of the [Fukushima] accident, and to secure safety, we'll implement fundamental measures while also decreasing the degree of dependence on nuclear power generation, to aim for a society that does not rely on nuclear power."

But doctors, scientists, agricultural experts, and much of the general public in Japan feel that a much more aggressive response to the nuclear disaster is needed.

Kodama believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas. He cited Japan's itai itai disease, when cadmium poisoning from mining resulted in the government eventually having to spend 800 billion yen to decontaminate an area of 1,500 hectares.